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I'm not really sure what their current situation is, but my point still stands. They have been in a downtrend for a month now and still have yet to open, so I'd say it matters more what your overall numbers look like versus which direction you are trending. Ideally you'd want low overall numbers AND a downtrend, but I'm comparing Germany (which has higher overall numbers but is trending down) and Texas (which has lower overall numbers but is trending up).
I think you're right, this really has more to do with how many tests they have administered. Currently I'm guessing there are TONS of asymptomatic people in Texas that have not been tested and are, therefore, not being counted in the number of cases in Texas. If we were to count all of them, obviously our death rate would drop too.
But you're right, Germany's trajectory doesn't look like ours, neither's does Italy. It was a bit of a pointless comparison for me to bring up, we are just in uncharted territory at the moment, and I'm trying to find some data which might give us a hint as to what we have in store for us here in Texas.
Well, exactly, both are important, first is like the "initial condition", and second is the evolution. So we are lucky to have low numbers currently, but we don't want to give it a chance to explode. I mean remember how the whole thing started.
Italy has been painfully slow to trend down, and they have tremendous number of infections, so it's really very difficult.
P.S. In regards to Rt for Texas, I don;t know, I have seen 0.9-1.1 estimates but, frankly, not sure how reliable.
I think I added a relevant point to my last comment right after you responded.....Texas is currently 46/50 for tests per million people.
I'm not sure what to make of Germany in general. I'm also not sure what to make of Texas, to be honest. Texas has had very low testing rates, but it's also had very low death rates. I'd expect the opposite. If a state isn't catching a high percentage of actual positives due to low testing, you'd expect high death rates. Texas is the fourth-worst state for testing but the 11th-best state in terms of death rate.
I'm not sure it makes sense to measure death rates though considering how many people are going untested. Some countries/states are more on top of their testing than others, but if you're not testing everyone, then you don't know the true death rate of the disease.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
Edit: Just saw your last post. My answer: I have no clue what it means. By itself, I would think it would mean Texas has a particularly high rate of untested positives cases. However, the low death rate indicates the exact opposite. So who knows!
My thoughts exactly
It's hard to really predict where any of us are heading, as this is uncharted territory for the world. I'm happy with the way things have been handled thus far in Dallas. I'm a little surprised by the opening of the state, but I'm taking a 'wait and see approach'. It feels premature, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Well, exactly, both are important, first is like the "initial condition", and second is the evolution. So we are lucky to have low numbers currently, but we don't want to give it a chance to explode. I mean remember how the whole thing started.
Italy has been painfully slow to trend down, and they have tremendous number of infections, so it's really very difficult.
P.S. In regards to Rt for Texas, I don;t know, I have seen 0.9-1.1 estimates but, frankly, not sure how reliable.
As far as the risk of this 'exploding', I think Texas (and the world) have changed drastically in the past couple of months. Coronavirus exploded initially because we didn't take it seriously.
I get that it's highly infectious and could very well explode yet again, but people are significantly more catuious this time around. Just to be clear, I'm not pro opening the state, but I'm also not convinced it'll be a bad idea. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
As far as the risk of this 'exploding', I think Texas (and the world) have changed drastically in the past couple of months. Coronavirus exploded initially because we didn't take it seriously.
I get that it's highly infectious and could very well explode yet again, but people are significantly more catuious this time around. Just to be clear, I'm not pro opening the state, but I'm also not convinced it'll be a bad idea. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
All true. I just think it's a bit early which can backfire... And I do hope I'm completely wrong.
All true. I just think it's a bit early which can backfire... And I do hope I'm completely wrong.
I agree with you. I would have been more okay with Texas opening up, but not superseding any of our county's, so that places like Dallas county could have sheltered in place for another two weeks and also continued to enforce masks.
Data is not being reported on a real time basis. Pennsylvania added almost 500 deaths today as it caught up with data from last 2 weeks. This has been happening with numbers for quite a few states where they have been catching up with reporting of data for the last 2 weeks. There was some controversy in Florida where Department of health numbers and medical examiners' numbers are showing a difference of more than 10%.
Death numbers will start to show going down in a couple of days, although in my estimate, if the numbers are reported real time, it has already started going down. You have hot-spots like NYC showing daily numbers of less than 300 for the last few days. You cannot possibly have 2500 deaths in a day, when the known hot-spots are showing low numbers. There is adjusting of death numbers that is going on, which has been keeping the daily numbers at around 2500 for the last few days.
As far as Texas is concerned, there is not a clear trend in the number of deaths. A couple of days ago, the death number was 15 and yesterday was 42. My conclusion here again is that some of the hospitals are not reporting data real-time which is leading to big swings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
A case is a positive test. I completely agree that our positive tests are understated, but thus far, they have correlated well with deaths, which is likely more accurate. We've been very close to 28-33k cases and 1800-2500 deaths on a daily basis, so until there is a deviation in this ratio, there's no reason to think that our positive tests has stayed high simply because we are catching a higher percentage of the true positives. If that were true, the number of deaths per positive test would have dropped.
I agree with you on that. However, I think majority of Dallasites will continue to do masks and practice physical distancing measures on their own, even if there is no enforcement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DPatel304
I agree with you. I would have been more okay with Texas opening up, but not superseding any of our county's, so that places like Dallas county could have sheltered in place for another two weeks and also continued to enforce masks.
Data is not being reported on a real time basis. Pennsylvania added almost 500 deaths today as it caught up with data from last 2 weeks. This has been happening with numbers for quite a few states where they have been catching up with reporting of data for the last 2 weeks. There was some controversy in Florida where Department of health numbers and medical examiners' numbers are showing a difference of more than 10%.
Death numbers will start to show going down in a couple of days, although in my estimate, if the numbers are reported real time, it has already started going down. You have hot-spots like NYC showing daily numbers of less than 300 for the last few days. You cannot possibly have 2500 deaths in a day, when the known hot-spots are showing low numbers. There is adjusting of death numbers that is going on, which has been keeping the daily numbers at around 2500 for the last few days.
As far as Texas is concerned, there is not a clear trend in the number of deaths. A couple of days ago, the death number was 15 and yesterday was 42. My conclusion here again is that some of the hospitals are not reporting data real-time which is leading to big swings.
1. Regarding Texas's death numbers: It might be the case that things aren't in real time, but that's always been true....and there's never been 59 deaths in a day. Further, even 42 from a couple days ago is the second-highest number yet. Two of the three highest days yet have been in the last three days, but you don't think there's a clear trend? Even if you were to do a five-day average, this would likely be the highest five-day average yet. Heck, per Bing's numbers for the last two days and Worldometer's number from today (Bing doesn't show today's number yet), there have been a total of 128 deaths in Texas in the last three days. That's an average of 42 deaths per day.
2. The same argument applies to the national numbers: There might be some catch up going on, but that's been going on for a while. With everything baked in, we're still seeing 2000-2500 deaths daily. I'm not sure if you saw my later point on New York, but we had 28,500 cases today even though New York only added 4700. New York is indeed down, but other places are up.
Btw, Bing's daily historical counts are sometimes unreliable. I've posted this before, but I've found cases where they would show a lower number of total deaths or cases on a day than they did the day before. One example is their total fatalities for Pennsylvania on 4/22 (1564) and 4/23 (1421). How did the total number of fatalities go down by 133 deaths from one day to the next? Assuming people aren't rising from the dead, this is impossible. I don't wish to get into the Bing vs. Worldometers thing again, but this could be accounting for some of the swings you have seen.
I'm not sure what you are seeing in the numbers that makes you think deaths are about to go down. The worst new daily case day was five days ago, followed by the third-worst day four days ago. If anything, we should be expecting a spike.
I'll ask again: What are you seeing in the numbers that makes you think things are getting better?
Last edited by Wittgenstein's Ghost; 04-29-2020 at 11:43 PM..
All true. I just think it's a bit early which can backfire... And I do hope I'm completely wrong.
It's not like they plan on a parade with 500k like Philadelphia in Spanish Flu 2018. Most of my friends at large corporations have WFH orders for the next 3-4 weeks.
Italy, Spain, Germany, Finland, Switzerland and Norway have reopened without the massive spike in hospitalizations that was seen in the Spanish Flu 2018. Business is still not at 100%. There are crowds, but many people are still avoiding going outside.
Here are some countries that reopening and how they are doing it:
Nothing like reading someone bash someone else for their arbitrary myopic viewpoint when they have their own arbitrary myopic viewpoint. Every single person has their viewpoint as to when we should re open. It is all arbitrary and myopic, unless you say until it is eradicated form the Earth. The facts are the economic downfall in DFW has become enough for some people and they are willing to take the risk to be able to do whatever they feel they need to do in their life. Every single person on this thread does the same thing every day before this Covid-19. During Flu season you make the cognizant choice to take the chance that you might get the Flu (and could die from it) because it is worth the risk to you. When you leave during rush hour to go home you make the cognizant choice that you have a better chance of getting into an accident than if you waited until 11PM and so on. You basically have arbitrary decision making criteria that you use to decide what you do in your lives. Sorry that everyone's differs but it doesn't make them any less right.
Let's get the sentences correct. Texas did not have its highest number of new cases yesterday (well maybe it did but no one knows). It had its highest number of positive tests from a somewhat random small sample of people. AS the study from EDS post showed this thing is being underreported by up to 75 fold.
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